· Private foundation
The Waterfall Family Foundation
Its FY2025 filing reports that it funds preselected organizations and did not take unsolicited requests; check the foundation's own site before ruling it out.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2019–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
By grant size · FY2025
- Under $10k24 grants · $45k
- $10k–50k1 grant · $20k
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY | $20,000 |
| TEMPLE SINAI | $5,185 |
| COX SCIENCE CENTER & AQUARIUM | $5,000 |
| NORTON MUSEUM OF ART | $5,000 |
| BRIDGEHAMPTON CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL | $5,000 |
| PALM BEACH CIVIC ASSOCIATION | $2,800 |
| THE SOCIETY OF THE FOUR ARTS | $2,500 |
| ALZHEIMER'S DRUG DISCOVERY FOUNDATION | $2,350 |
| CARBONFUND ORG FOUNDATION | $2,000 |
| PHILLIPS ACADEMY | $2,000 |
| OCEAN CONSERVANCY | $2,000 |
| ATLANTIC SALMON FEDERATION | $1,500 |
| THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION | $1,250 |
| MILLDAM NURSERY SCHOOL | $1,000 |
| THE CONCORD LAND CONSERVATION TRUST | $1,000 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Dollar for dollar, your grants (FY20–25) land where the poverty rate runs at 14%, against an area that typically sits at 7%. 98% of your dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +28% since the first grant, against +18% for the ones you funded once.
28 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 11 since wound down; 7 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 86% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $9k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- NYNew York Historical Society6× · 2020–2025 · $186k · revenue +5%
- TSThe Society of the Four Arts Inc5× · 2021–2025 · $108k · revenue +381%
- RFRAYMOND F KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC2× · 2023–2024 · $38k · revenue +35%
Funded once
- TPTHE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INCone grant, 2020 · $19k · revenue +5%
- WMWHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARTgraduatedone grant, 2021 · $15k · revenue +183%
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2024 · $15k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The Morgan Library & Museum celebrates and shares the history and process of human creativity from antiquity to the present day through the preservation, study, and interpretation of a dynamic and growing collection.
The bac is committed to provide excellence in design education grounded in practice and accessible to diverse communities.
The institute for advanced study (the institute) is one of the world's leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. see schedule o.
Bard college seeks to provide a challenging academic program and a supportive environment that fosters a collaborative interchange of ideas in the classroom as well as ambition to achieve excellence.
The new york botanical garden is a museum of plants and a scientific research center devoted to the study of plants and their uses. it is the garden's mission to improve public understanding of the natural world, horticulture, and the…
The mission of the jewish museum is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art and jewish culture. see schedule o for more information.
Research, education and general - princeton university is a private not-for-profit, non-sectarian institution of higher learning with approximately 5,700 undergraduate and 3,300 graduate students. 2,500 students graduated in the 2024-2025…
The mission of the brooklyn institute of arts and sciences, d/b/a brooklyn museum (the "museum") is to bring people together through art and experiences that inspire celebration, compassion, courage, and the will to act. (see schedule o).
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is a world-renowned center for biological discovery and training that is notably affiliated with more than 60 Nobel Prize winners. Research is conducted by full-time faculty as well as hundreds of the…
The Museum of Modern Art is a private, non-profit institution chartered by the State of New York Department of Education in 1929 to foster public awareness of modern and contemporary art. (Continued in Schedule O)
The Frick Collection (the "Collection") operates an internationally recognized art museum and library program for the inspiration and enjoyment of the public and for the advancement of the study of fine arts and kindred subjects.
Organization's mission statement true to the ambitious vision of its founder and her spirit of creative risk-taking, the mission of the isabella stewart gardner museum is: - to bring to life and preserve the rich historic collection; - to…
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is The Philharmonic Symphony Society of Ny Inc and the most unlike its peers is Citytrack Incorporated. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
For each theme you fund, this compares how the sector’s money is shifting with how your own giving is shifting.
Sector change and giving change are each shown relative to their own range, growing (right) or shrinking (left); both normalized, so inflation isn’t mistaken for growth.
Your grantees are a median of 48 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 4% of your grantees by number, and just 0% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 10% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
49 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 49 of the 66 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds New York Historical Society ↗
- Who funds The Society of the Four Arts Inc ↗
- Who funds CITYTRACK INCORPORATED ↗
- Who funds RAYMOND F KRAVIS CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds CONNECTICUT AUDUBON SOCIETY INC ↗
- Who funds NORTON MUSEUM OF ART INC ↗
- Who funds BRIDGEHAMPTON CHAMBER MUSIC ASSOCIATES INC ↗
- Who funds THE PHILHARMONIC SYMPHONY SOCIETY OF NY INC ↗
- Who funds WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART ↗
- Who funds Atlantic Salmon Federation (US) Inc ↗
- Who funds ALZHEIMER'S DRUG DISCOVERY FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds THE MICHAEL J FOX FOUNDATION FOR PARKINSON'S RESEARCH ↗
- Who funds Palm Beach Civic Association Inc ↗
- Who funds Cox Science Center and Aquarium Inc ↗
- Who funds NEW ENGLAND WILDLIFE CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds ENVIRONMENT NEXT INC ↗
- Who funds OCEAN CONSERVANCY ↗
- Who funds TRUSTEES OF PHILLIPS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds UNITED JEWISH APPEAL-FEDERATION OF JEWISH PHILANTHROPIES OF NEW YORK INC ↗
- Who funds BENTLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds THE ATLANTIC GOLF CLUB FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds WALTHAM LAND TR INC ↗
- Who funds THE TRUSTEES OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK ↗
- Who funds JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds THE BREARLEY SCHOOL ↗
- Who funds AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION ↗
- Who funds PALM BEACH OPERA INC ↗
- Who funds American Museum of Natural History ↗
- Who funds NEW YORK CITY BALLET INC ↗
- Who funds CONCORD LAND CONSERVATION TRUST ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Jewish Communal Fund · National Philanthropic Trust · Gs Donor Advised Philanthropy Fund for Wealth Management Inc · Jpmorgan Chase Foundation · The Pfizer Foundation Inc · The Blackbaud Giving Fund · Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust Inc · Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program · American Endowment Foundation · Donor Advised Charitable Giving Inc · Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund · The Bank of America Charitable Foundation Inc
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization The Waterfall Family Foundation funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal, a single department, or state — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Cox Science Center and Aquarium Inc — 6% of income from government
- Trustees of Boston College — 3% of income from government
- Connecticut Audubon Society Inc — 1% of income from government
- New England Wildlife Center Inc — 1% of income from government
- The Palm Beach Symphony Society Inc — 0% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.
Warm introductions · Powered by PlinthPlus
How do I get to The Waterfall Family Foundation?
Find your warmest path to The Waterfall Family Foundation through trustees and officers whose names appear on both boards. Search for your organization and Plinth traces the shortest route it can evidence.
Each link is a name appearing on two organizations’ public IRS 990 filings, matched on that name and, where the filings support it, on location. A same-state match has geographic support, which is a second matching feature rather than confirmation that the two are one person; a cross-state one is the likeliest to be two people who share a name. Every hop shows its tier, low-confidence and distant paths are held back rather than guessed, and it is worth confirming the person before you use the introduction.